SF is still sweet on 105-year-old Schubert’s Bakery

A Saint Honore cake is displayed at Schubert's Bakery on Clement Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016.

Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

Chocolate flowers with yellow and red stems curve around the side of a strawberry cheesecake. They rest atop a bed of white and pale pink chocolate curls accented by a few dark chocolate leaves that have been brushed in gold. A handful of local raspberries match the bright red ribbon tied in a bow around the base of the cake. Etched on a white chocolate disc, the words “Schubert’s Bakery” add the final touch.

Not too shabby for a shop that is 105 years old.

“It’s just a wonderful place,” says customer Rick David, who’s been bringing cornucopian fruit tarts and Swedish Princess cakes draped in yellow marzipan to family parties for the last 10 years.

Longtime San Franciscans, particularly those who live in the Inner Richmond neighborhood, have a sweet spot for Schubert’s. “I try other patisseries,” says Effie Sharabi, a driver for VIP Limousines, who stops by the bakery most mornings for a croissant or apple turnover. “But I always come back. This is my favorite.”

Sharabi has been a Schubert’s loyalist for 15 years. Like him, most customers have been ordering the same cakes, cookies and pastries for years, and they depend on Schubert's to deliver their favorites unchanged by time. That was the tacit promise owner Ralph Wenzel made to them when he and his brother Lutz, now semiretired, bought the bakery in 1995.

German immigrant Oswald R. Schubert built the original bakery on Fillmore Street near McAllister in 1911. It moved to its current location at 521 Clement St. in the 1940s. The Wenzel brothers, who grew up in Germany, apprenticed in their parents’ bakery before moving to Holland in 1979. There, both became accomplished pastry chefs and completed stints at five-star hotels in Dubai. They were working at Schubert’s when owners Hilmar and Annie Maier, who had run the bakery since the late 1960s, decided to retire. The brothers wanted to buy it, but as recent immigrants without sufficient credit, they couldn’t secure a loan from the bank. The Maiers offered to finance them. “We are very grateful to them,” says Ralph Wenzel.

The brothers’ goal was to preserve the status quo of this beloved bakery. For them, that meant keeping the menu virtually the same — and doing anything to please their customers. For example, when someone requested the Fuerst Pueckler cake for Christmas, a Schubert’s original that was no longer on the menu, the Wenzels made it anyway. The Neapolitan stunner, striated with vanilla and chocolate sponge between layers of chocolate and raspberry whipped cream, has since become a menu mainstay.

The Fuerst Pueckler is one of several cakes you won’t find at many — if any — other bakeries in the Bay Area. Other perennial favorites include the Swedish Princess cake, a white cake stacked with raspberry jam, kirsch custard and whipped cream; and the Opera cake, a hazelnut sponge filled with chocolate and mocha praline.

11of13Cakes, made daily, are placed on racks before being decorated and refrigerated at Schubert’s Bakery on Clement Street in S.F.Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

12of13Jana Sikk works behind the counter at Schubert's Bakery on Clement Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016.Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

13of13Longtime regular customer Rick David (right) enjoys a pastry and coffee with his son Nicholas at Schubert's Bakery on Clement Street in San Francisco, Calif. on Saturday, Aug. 6, 2016.Photo: Paul Chinn, The Chronicle

You won’t find many dense cakes at Schubert’s; instead, most rely on sponge layered with mousse, custards, fruit fillings and whipped cream. For nearly every whole cake that can serve a crowd, the Wenzels also offer miniature replicas and/or slices. The only nod to the brothers’ German heritage is the Black Forest, a chocolate sponge with sour cherries and kirsch-flavored whipped cream.

While the cakes definitely win the beauty contest, an array of side-of-the-saucer cookies, like buttery almond shortbread and delicate Swiss tea cookies, have devoted followers, too. Everything is baked fresh daily, and any leftovers go on sale the next day, which early risers snap up within a few hours.

Ralph Wenzel employs a team of about a dozen people, many of whom have been there for years. “I don’t like having a lot of turnover,” he explains. Bakers sometimes start working at midnight to prepare special-order cakes for early-morning pickups.

“We take a lot of pride in our work,” says Nick Snell, as he lathers a strawberry shortcake with whipped cream. Snell has a 45-year baking career and taught pastry at the California Culinary Academy for 20 years. The plump strawberries that go into this cake come from local Ortiz Farm. Another Bay Area company, Guittard, supplies the chocolate. On the opposite side of the kitchen, Sonny Luong rolls out bright yellow marzipan to swathe a row of Swedish Princess cakes. He’ll make 140 to 150 of them in a week and as many as 50 on Saturday. His sister, two brothers and niece also work at Schubert’s.

At age 57, Wenzel isn’t yet ready to retire. He just signed another five-year lease and suspects he might have another 10 years in him. “Baking is my whole life,” he says.

When he does eventually leave, he hopes to sell Schubert’s to someone who will preserve it the way he and his brother did. He blushes when asked how he feels about being part of a legacy: “I’m proud of the fact that we’ve maintained the business for 20 years,” he says, “that we pay our bills on time and that quite a few families can make a decent living working at this place.”

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